


The Nightmare Before Halloweentown

by brainlessomniscent



Category: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Genre: Acid Dissolve, Body Horror, Decay, Dread, F/M, Monsters, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Skeletons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 11:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20226769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brainlessomniscent/pseuds/brainlessomniscent
Summary: Prequel to the Nightmare Before Christmas, complete with ghastly deaths for our favorite characters





	The Nightmare Before Halloweentown

Jack’s nostrils flare as he breathes the clean forest air, marvelling at it’s timeless scent. No matter how the world changed around him, the forest will always remain as it is right in this moment. 

Jack sighs before whistling sharply. 

“Come along, Zero!” he calls as a playful little dog darts among the trees. Jack smiles, glad for the company as he starts off again.

At long last, Jack sees the twisted, knotted tree with a faded orange stain on one side. “Zero!” He whistles again.

Zero skids to a stop in front of his master, yipping before settling on his haunches. 

Jack laughs. “Alright, alright,” he pats the dog fondly on his head. “Let’s get these flowers to where they’re going.” Pink daisies of course, Sally’s favorite. 

Jack passes the tree and heads off the trail. The forest immediately thickens and darkens, threatening all who do not know the way. Jack wasn’t afraid though; the darkness was usual and despite the stories, Sally and he used to laugh about it. 

The smile from Zero’s antics fades quickly as the grave enters his sight. The dirt still smelled fresh, only small sprouts of grass beginning to grow as Jack knelt, placing the flowers down. 

Suddenly, his vision goes dark. He shouts in surprise as a rough fabric covers his face which was quickly followed by his arms. A number of hands push him as he struggles to free his arms, pinned down as they were. 

“Help!” he yells, struggling as he registered Zero yipping and growling at his attackers. 

“Such a shame to lose this bag,” a nasally voice says. The pushes slow and shocked, he wonders to himself, _“are these… only children?”_

He stops fighting because if they were children, surely they couldn’t…. Or they wouldn’t…. 

_Splash!_

A final shove sent him tumbling, falling, drowning. 

Immediately, his nerves were impared, not fast enough to scream at him from the smallest splash of acid. The bag disappears and yet all he could feel was himself drowning. He tries to swim, his muscles melting as he heaves himself onto the shore, gasping without air entering disappearing lungs. Instead, the air whistles through his rib cage as he fades away, his brain melting along with the rest of him.

Some Time Later….

Jack’s eyes open. Where was he? 

He groans as he sits up, holding his head. His skull was pounding…

He tried to focus, but his thoughts were hazy, something was flashing noisily at him and suddenly there was something cold on his face….

His vision focuses and he can finally see a pale little dog licking him. Jack couldn’t help but smile despite the pain and pats the dog as it licks eagerly at his face. 

As he pets, Jack notices a few oddities with the dog. 

It was floating and he couldn’t exactly feel it. A ghost?

Despite the whole dead thing, the dog seemed lively, floating around as cheerful as a puppy. Jack smiles and follows it, hoping to get a clue of where he was. 

The dog leads him to a steaming, glowing, green pond that bubbled subtly. A thick _pop!_ indicated when a bubble finally broke through the surface that hissed as if a threatening rattlesnake. 

As Jack nears the pool, he notices the ghost dog nosing at a lump next to the pond. The characteristics seemed oddly misshapen and ghastly with the glow of the pond. Jack was only a couple feet away when he finally understood what he was seeing. 

The body looked almost sleeping, but that was the only thing natural about it. It was horribly thin, with fur singed and what looked like acid burn wounds shiny and a sick mixture of bloody red and glowing green reflecting from the pool. The poor thing clearly had suffered before it finally died. 

The ghost dog yips as it zips around Jack, startling him out of his morose inspection. 

“Is this you, boy?” he asks softly. The dog whimpers and noses at the body again. 

Jack edges closer, careful to steer away from the spatters of green goo and gently turns the dog’s body around, looking for a nametag. Jack clears his throat, a hollow sound in the quiet and asks hesitantly, “Zero? Boy?” The dog yips and tries to nuzzle Jack. 

The man shivers and clatters. Startled by the clattering, Jack looks down at his attire, expecting some reasonable explanation but what he saw made him gasp without air. 

He was nothing but bones, not a scrap of flesh left. Holding up his hands, he started to pant with no lungs, cry with no tears. Zero nuzzles him and he shivers again. A sudden _bump!_ startles both of them, setting Zero yipping again. 

A man with an enormous head, creepily pursed lips and a scientist ensemble complete with lab coat stumbles into the sickly colored clearing. 

“Of all the places…” The man mumbles, clutching his head. He brushes himself off and freezes when he sees Jack. “Who are you?” he demands. 

Jack rises to his full height, causing the man to cower beneath him. 

“Dear me, sir, I didn’t realize… Please don’t tell Mr. Boogie, I will be most grateful if you didn’t share that I came to this world…” Jack was puzzled but nodded his agreement at the man. 

“I won’t say a thing if you show me why you’re here, now.” Jack says. The man bows his thanks to Jack and leads him deeper into the forest. 

“I’m a scientist from Halloweentown, sir,” he hesitates. “Doctor Finklestein, if you don’t mind.”

Jack starts to reply in kind but finds himself unable to remember his name. Deciding better than to give himself away, he remains quiet and tries to stay aloof. He didn’t want to scare the doctor, but it seems best to let the doctor continue until Jack could remember something. 

Nervously, Finklestein continues, “I just need a few ingredients from the human world. From the town square I found a grave that wasn’t too far from the portal. I wouldn’t be close enough to humans to be caught, I swear!” Jack raises an eyebrow at the man.

“Why do you need a grave?” 

The scientist hesitates but quietly responds, “The corpse, sir. It’s only a couple weeks old.” They stop before a simple slab, elegantly carved. 

“What for?” Jack asks as the man puts down his lantern, pulling a small shovel from the folds of his lab coat. 

“A living doll,” he breathes, relishing the words. As the mad scientist digs, Jack ponders the situation he was finding himself in. 

The dog was a ghost, he himself was a living skeleton, and this man seemed to think reanimating a corpse would be easy. Maybe graverobbing was normal? He couldn’t remember, but it seemed the doctor knew what was happening. 

When Finklestein strikes wood, his breathing grows heavier and he leers down at the coffin. The wood cracks and snaps as he breaks through and he casually asks Jack, “You didn’t know this one, did you, my boy?” 

Jack scans the lovely, but slightly overripe face of the corpse then flicks his gaze up to the stone, reading the epitaph. 

“Sally… I don’t think so, Doctor,” Jack comments, scratching his skull. 

Jack helps the man carry the corpse, led to a twisted tree. The doctor raises an eyebrow at the closely trailing Zero, but doesn’t comment as brushes dust off of an orange stain and opens the door. 

Several Months Later

Boogie’s boys cower in fear, shivering and clinging to each other as their master rages. The large man flicks his wrist and another spike thuds into the whirling knife wheel. 

“How can HE be a leader? He’s not a natural monster, yet they march against ME?” Another spike hits the board, this time wedged between the arm bones of a skeleton chained in place. 

The children mumble their agreement, reassuring their boss he was truly terrifying and the people deserved punishment for not seeing it.

“Though…” Barrel starts, but was quickly silenced with slaps and shooshes from his companions. They hiss for him to shut up but Boogie whirls toward him. 

“Though what?” He pauses but there’s silence and he takes a step towards them. 

The kids step back. 

“I am the king of Halloweentown, you fools,” he sneers. The children cower and try to make themselves look even smaller before his fury. “What makes them listen to him? A human?” He about faces, pacing in the opposite direction. “He was a human… threatening our land with his human resting grounds so close to our portal. I was protecting them with his death…” He whirls to face them again, face scrunched in anger. “And then you three mucked it up!” 

“No!” gasps Lock. “We listen to you and serve you! You’re the only one we would. Barrel only meant he was supposed to die, so what could have saved him?” 

Boogie falls silent, fiddling with his throwing spikes. “Halloweentown wants him,” he finally says. “It’s magic must have saved him.” 

With no warning, Boogie’s arm snaps and another knife imbeds the throwing board and shatters the skeleton’s skull. The children flinch as Boogie laughs. “One more thing, boys. How’s the Doctor’s pet project?” He turns back to the wheel as Shock speaks up.

“The ragdoll is still being sewn up and the stuffing is just leaves! It’s not much but Jack goes to see it every few days, even without a brain in it,” she giggles. “It’s just as stupid as these two.” She sneers at Lock and Barrel.

Boogie chuckles along with her and suggests, “My dear… I think we hit him where it hurts. Steal the brain for me.” She nods vigorously and the boys watch on fearfully at Boogie busts a seam, bugs spilling out as he laughs. “Good girl. I’ll see you kids later.”

Dismissed, the children scamper away as Boogie stares at his slowing knife board. “I have a bone man to keep from my throne,” he says.

Several Years Later

Halloweentown is in high spirits. Oogie Boogie was finally banished, hiding out in the forest. Boogie’s Boys swore themselves to Jack, promising that they would find and imprison the Boogeyman (with their fingers crossed, of course). The only casualties of the war were a couple hundred bugs from Oogie and the face of a clown. 

Jack smiles graciously at the crowd’s praises. He accepts them humbly but carefully rejects the title “King of Halloweentown”. 

“I don’t need to rule,” he promises the people. Despite their protests, he suggests a democratically elected ruler, maybe a mayor, and promises himself that he wouldn’t run, no matter how they pressured him. 

Nevertheless, they people declare him Jack, the Pumpkin King, named as such since his skull looks like a Jack O’Lantern. He hesitantly accepts when they gave him a real name; Jack Skeleton. Skellington? Something like that. 

As the people chat about whether the name was good enough for their hero, he slips away. 

Upon entering the Doctor’s tower, he calls out, “is it ready?” pleading. When her brain went missing, the project had been delayed for a long time, only restarted in the last few days of the war. Luckily, Boogie’s Boys kept it intact, and she was still able to recover thanks to the doctor’s expert preservation of rotting flesh. 

Without knowing why, Jack had become very invested in the Doctor’s doll, and was extremely relieved to find her brain safe.

“Almost, my boy,” Finklestein replies. “You can’t rush perfection you know.” Jack sighs. That was a very frequent reply. “But she just needs to be woken up.” He squints up at Jack as the skeleton moves closer, leaning over the doll’s face. 

After a moment, her eyes flutter. “Jack?” she breathes.

He frowns at her, squinting. “I’m sorry, miss. Have we met before?” 

Her eyes slowly focus and peering up at the skull she inhales deeply. “I feel like death, but you look worse.” The corner of her lip flutters into a smile and she inhales shakily. 

He nods in agreement. “I am Jack, the Skeleton King.” He pauses and reconsiders. “No, wait. A skeleton and a king?” Annoyed, he shakes his head and starts over. “My name is Jack,” he clarifies. 

Her eyes widen in recognition and confusion. “A… Skeleton king?” she asks.

“No,” he flusters. “Just Jack, if you please.” She peers anxiously up at him.

“Have we met?” he asks again.

“No,” she replies.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is way out of the norm for stuff that I write (maybe not in style but in genre) but I wrote this when i was a sophomore in high school, almost six years ago.
> 
> I came across it (written on paper, can you believe it??!) and decided I didn't give it enough recognition back in the day.
> 
> I revamped it, helped it make sense, though it only loosely matching up in continuity with the Pumpkin King game (I didn't know it existed back in the day ;-;) and voila. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Cass


End file.
